Web designers are often website owners. If you fall into this category, you have probably already realized the importance of knowing and understanding who is coming to your site and what they are doing while they’re there. Whether you are running a blog or an e-commerce site, this information is vital. That’s why it’s key to have a good set of tools providing you with website analytics. There are lots of tools out there, all with different features and different prices. In this post, I’m showing you the best free analytics tools available.
Clicky
Clicky prides itself on providing real time analytics. The UI is very clean and functional, and there is also a dedicated iPhone version.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is probably the most popular free analytics tool available. One of my favorite features is it’s custom reporting.
Reinvigorate
Reinvigorate also provides real-time stat tracking and can alert you when a visitor performs a particular action on your site. It also features heat map technology that lets you see where visitors are clicking.
Piwik
Piwik is open source and is built with PHP and MySQL. To use it, you have to install it on your own server, which is a simple process and only takes about 5 minutes.
Yahoo! Web Analytics
Yahoo! Web Analytics is a free full featured enterprise analytics solution with powerful and flexible dashboards, segmentation tools, and campaign management features.
WordPress.com Stats
If your site runs on WordPress and your not crazy about being overwhelmed with too many features, then WordPress.com Stats might be right for you.
Woopra
Woopra claims to be the world’s most comprehensive, information rich, easy to use, real-time Web tracking and analysis application. Judging by the quality of it’s user interface, they might be right.
FireStats
FireStats doesn’t feature a lot of fancy graphs and charts, but some may find this refreshing.
GoingUp
With an AJAX-rich interface, GoingUp! combines powerful web-analytics with top notch SEO tools.
Mint
Okay, Mint isn’t exactly free. However, for only a flat fee of $30 dollars and considering all of it’s features, it might as well be free.
Blog Tracker
Blog Tracker is a light weight analytics tool for blogs.
Where is statcounter? Isn’t it a Good analytic tool?
Thanks
Sankar
Very useful!
For quick visual diagnosis, Crazy Egg offers nifty “heat” maps: http://crazyegg.com/
Awesome, thank you
Incredible, awesome tools, thanks for sharing info. Greetings!
There is a more comprehensive list of all web analytics tools at http://kpinomics.com/directory/companies/
You’re missing http://www.w3counter.com
Statcounter and w3counter are just “stats”. These are analytics. Big difference.
As Sankar mentioned above, I would also like to recommend:
Statcounter
http://www.statcounter.com/
Good article, but I’d love to get some recommendations about each, what are the specific functionalities. For example why should I pay for Mint when I’m using Google Analytics?
Excellent list. You might want to differentiate the difference between logfile analysis vs. page tagging analysis
Google analytics is page tagging where mint uses logfiles.
More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_analytics
Good list to try different systems…
It’s quite nice that there are more iPhone / smartphone apps available… Checking your stats on the fly!
Clicky is somewhat similar to PMetrics.
really awesome list. I would like to recommended for inclusion of Stat counter. and please eliminate Yahoo web analytics tools,as its not free tool.
I would recommend also http://www.koego.com, which suites well for bloggers and has integration with Twitter too.
Thanks for the great list of websites analytics, will be of great help 😀
Hey! Nice post! You might also want to check out: http://codefusionlab.blogspot.com/2009/06/45-excellent-website.html
Hi there is good list thanks.. Best of woopra..
Always good to know of a few options. I’m a big fan of G’s.
Great article, thanks for sharing this useful collection, I have always used Google Analytics, people have recommended Woopra to me, so I might check that out. I’ve had clients in the past who have used statcounter too and I would recommend you check that out.
really good list of stat resources 🙂 thanks
Nice list.
I use http://www.statcounter.com and http://www.dacounter.com
Quite useful. Thanks 🙂
I tend to stick with Google Analytics for two reasons. One it does the same thing that very expensive software does for free while not costing anything.
Reason number two is because I was introduced to it early on and stock with it since them.
Although I worked with other analytics software, I just find Google’s software easiest to use and more user friendly.
I would just like to acho what Dror said above, Analytics was introduced to me when I was starting out and I have just stuck with it since. On another note, there is a great Analytics app for the iphone (called Analytics) you should check out.
Very good information. Thank you
Nice sharing of tools really very helpful…
We have been using Woopra and Google Analytics. Both have noticeably different opinions on day to day stats often varying greatly. If anyone has insight into this we would be interested to hear it.
Thanks for sharing. I like Google ANalytics, but it’s not realtime. Maybe I will give Clicky a try.
Hello,
nice Article! I always used google Analytics, but there seem to be some good alternatives…
Cheers Malte
thank you for this infos
Interesting list but unfortunately, once you’ve chosen an analytics tool, it is hard to switch and lose all the history… Therefore, I’ll probably continue using Google Analytics.
Mint should never be on this list… not free and no better than some of the other great products you listed above either.
These are some great free analytics tools man.
Thanks and keep up the good work.
This is a good list of free apps, but what about putting together a similar list for paid ones? I like my current solution, so for me that comparison would be helpful.
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hat a great article..i need this one to improve my skill
great thanks
yahoo sucks like always
While I love Google Analytics, the dark secret behind it and any other hosted analytics solution is that you don’t own the data, they do.
Piwik is very easy to install, i’ve never used Mint but alwasy kept up with it. I think having a solution, paid or not, that you maintain on your server and where you own the data is the most important aspect.
The Twitter analytics in Clicky is pretty intriguing as well, but it probably could be integrated into Piwik with a little effort.
Google Analytics has always been my usual choice for when I want more than just AWSTATS, but I didn’t know that they own the data – that’s a revelation to me. Can anyone confirm if its the same with Mint – or do you own the data as you’re paying for the service?
Wow, great!! BTW: I love your site’s design
YMA:
“Yahoo! Web Analytics is currently offered for free to all Yahoo! Small Business Merchant Standard, Merchant Professional and Store merchants, and all Advertisers that are supported by a Yahoo! Account Manager.
Unfortunately, if you do not meet the above criteria you are not currently eligible for Yahoo! Web Analytics.”
uhm, yeah its free, its a pitty nobody other than people who pay yahoo are allowed to use it but hey… its ‘free’ and btw. will Reinvigorates (closed) Beta Phase ever end? Nobody knows 😉
I suggest Apache Logs Viewer. It’s a free windows application that allows you to view and analyze apache log files.
You can generate some good reports (bar/pie charts) and also compute some interesting statistics.
http://www.apacheviewer.com
Great list. I would also mention http://www.overstat.com which is a 100% Flash solution with real-time stats also.
Great list of tools. We love woopra, works great.
Nice post! Try this position, rank and website uptime monitoring service – http://monitor.mazecore.com
Thanks for sharing. I will try Woopra, I already attempted to register at http://www.reinvigorate.net but it seems to be an error on their page and sending new applications doesn’t work.
I get a lot of valuable information from your article. thanks
Can I run two web analytics in only one site?
Yes Claudio you can run two or more web analytic for a single website.
Great list, someone should come up with an ultimate features list we can submit to all these analytics companies. All of them lack in something or the other!
Tasty Comment Tannu. Well done.
I want to use Piwik to trace my website emsairmailtracking.com
Is the a limit on how long your comments can be? Timed out about 5 times when trying to post a 8 line long comment.
Great article on web analytics tools. I’m trying to increase awareness among the legal community that a web analytics tool is a requirement for any professional website. I think the list you’ve provided here is a great starting point for small law firms interested in getting started collecting data on their website. For anyone interested, I recently posted an article about web analytics specifically geared towards the legal community: PPC and SEO: Why Lawyers Need Web Analytics
Mouse tracking is another cool technology to see how your visitors interact with your website. Check out http://www.picnet.com.au/met because they do this and so much more. They’re also close to releasing a version with Google Analytics data integrated in to the system.
Is that any tools no need to install script?
Allow me to suggest another new tool.
UserReport.com is a free analytics service that generates detailed statistics about the demographic profile of visitors to a website. The product is targeted towards webmasters and contains a free survey-tool as well as a free feedback-forum called CrowdIntelligence.
Thanks for the list, will have to check some of these out.
GoingUp is not functional.
They have no end user support.
They have no knowledge base.
They have no community forum.
They do not answer user queries.
Data can ‘go stale’ and there is no fix for that event.
These flaws are more than a year old and have not been addressed by GoingUP.
Get Clicky. They only allow one site per free trial version, you must purchase an upgrade to add any websites to track.
Google Analytics, currently stalled, with no information forthcoming about why data is not being collected or reported. Newly added sites show they detect the codes, and waiting on data, but it does not show and the site does not issue any reports.
This flaw happens with GA about one per year, and it can last more than a month. Just look into the complaints about ‘no data’ and you will find many.
Newly added sites show they detect the codes, and waiting on data, but it does not show and the site does not issue any reports.
Thank you so much for the informative post. For reasons I cannot figure out, Google Analytics has stopped working for me. I have a dialog with a Google employee on their forum but this has not gotten anywhere. Your information will help me take the blindfolds off again as I jump to another analytics tool.
Tanxxxxx for this article. Clicky is the service to choose for me 🙂 Keep up the good work.
Dan
I have switched to Site Meter from GA.. good riddance!!
I have a dialog with a Google employee on their forum but this has not gotten anywhere. Your information will help me take the blindfolds off again as I jump to another analytics to
I like just using my server stats.. but statcounter is quite good as well and hidden. Thanks for the great site.
What? I dont know about that! you got anything to support it?
Which of the analytic tools would you choose over all the others? Ok…. I have 75 sites and climbing right now. Without going into each and every site, is there a way for me to add analytics to each of these sites?
If you meant, without altering any code in your site at all. No, its not possible.
I guess you dont want to add the tracking code in each page of each of the 75 sites. Guess you would be having some kind of include code that goes into all pages.
May be you could have one include page in one of your 75 sites, and each site include this single page.
Google analytics is quite customizable. Try it.
In my opinion a combination of Google Analytics and Mint is the perfect solution. GA for in-depth stats and Mint for real time traffic observation.
GoingUp is not functional.
They have no end user support.
They have no knowledge base.
They have no community forum.
They do not answer user queries.
Data can ‘go stale’ and there is no fix for that event.
These flaws are more than a year old and have not been addressed by GoingUP.
Get Clicky. They only allow one site per free trial version, you must purchase an upgrade to add any websites to track.
Google Analytics, currently stalled, with no information forthcoming about why data is not being collected or reported. Newly added sites show they detect the codes, and waiting on data, but it does not show and the site does not issue any reports.
This flaw happens with GA about one per year, and it can last more than a month. Just look into the complaints about ‘no data’ and you will find many.
Reading an older book on web analytics. Your opinion on AWStats and ClickTrack? What I’m seeing is that you still need a combination of analytics tools to get complete information.
Hey guys, I actually work for a company which develops our own web analytics solution. The thing is, it all started out with my boss trying to get the most relevant data about his campaigns (it was a matter of life and death) but no tool was good enough. That’s why he got together with a friend and they came up with what is now called Lytiks. We’re trying to incorporate what makes the most sense for any SMB owner or marketer. And of course, I use it myself to track our own traffic. For example, right now I’m going to give you a link with a tag on it, so I can see if anyone clicked on it by segmenting it out 😉
Check it out if you’re curious (it’s also free): http://bit.ly/bKRnZy
Also, we love responding to people’s questions, so shoot us an email if you prefer!
Happy Thanksgiving!!!
Thank you for the list. What about awstats or webalizer? Are these tools categorized under another name as Website Analytics Tools?
I would put my money on goingup… really a nice service… used it and found its service very satisfactory.
Article unfortunately does not cover GoSquared.com at all, which is probably the best tool out there with its easy to understand design, live chat, campaign tracking and all of the features the other platforms have…
I’ve only ever used Google Analytics, and I think I would be very unlikely to stray from this as obviously they have billions of dollars development at their disposal whereas the others are much smaller scale. Still worth knowing whats out there though!